A campaigner beat the clampers by securing a £130 refund with the help of the Evening Post after his daughter’s car was immobilised.

Mike Penny’s daughter Debbie was stung after dropping off her mother in the Lidl and McDonald’s car park in Oxford Road, at around 5pm last December.

Mr Penny branded the industry “completely unethical” and said parking enforcer Premier Parking Services (PPS) left his 21-year-old daughter in a state of fear.

As reported in the Post last month, Debbie had picked up her father from work at Thames Valley University (TVU) and dropped him off at the West Reading car park, where he transferred into her mother’s car.

Her parents then drove off. But she made the expensive mistake of parking there while visiting the shops across the road. Debbie returned to find her Rover clamped and asked to cough up cash, which she did not have. She had to call her mum out to pay a £130 bill from PPS, which operates on the site on behalf of landowner, chartered surveyor Mason Philips.

After contacting Reading West MP Martin Salter and showing him how the car park was badly lit he wrote to Mason Philips for help.

The TVU lecturer from Upper Basildon said: “I was prepared to go to court because the lighting of the signs is that bad, it just shines into the car park and not on the signs.

“If I break the law then I break the law and will hold my hands up.

“But there is just no way of telling there are clampers at the car park, you can’t see the signs properly and there’s so much garbage on them you couldn’t tell anyway.”

On Tuesday this week Mason Philips wrote to Mr Penny apologising for the poor lighting for which it was responsible and re-imbursed him the cash.

The letter said: “It appears that some lights have failed and there will be measures taken to assure you that the same situation will not happen again.”

Mr Penny said the refund will also help his daughter psychologically get over her ordeal when her car was threatened to be crushed if she could not pay up.

He added: “I sent them all the documents following my letters with the clampers at Premier Parking Services plus a copy of the article in the Evening Post.

“I was surprised to get the refund, but as I said from the start I was prepared to take it all the way – I would have gone to the small claims court.

“I had looked into it and it would have cost me £30 to get the summons and I would have thought they would pay up after that.

“But this is obviously great news and it’s thanks to the Evening Post too.”

In July 2008, Winnersh psychotherapist Dr Erskine Fenty failed in his attempt to sue PPS for £3,000 for loss of earnings after his car was clamped and towed from the same car park.

Reading County Court ruled there was not enough evidence.

However, just two weeks later motorist Malcolm Marshall from Sonning was refunded £325 after being clamped by PPS in the same car park in January 2008. He disagreed he should be left £90 out of pocket by going to Swindon by taxi to get back his Vauxhall Carlton.